Russian diplomat Vladimir Safronkov’s speech on the floor of the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday was unusual. Accusing the British of blocking political efforts to end the Syrian conflict, the Russian deputy envoy to the United Nations suddenly wagged a finger at Matthew Rycroft, Britain’s permanent representative to the United Nations, and said: “Look at me! Don’t you look away from me! Why are you looking away?”

“Don’t you dare insult Russia again,” he added later. . . .

Safronkov’s tone, not just what he said but how he said it, turned heads. Even RT, the state-funded Russian media network, called the harangue an “extraordinary attack on his British counterpart, using some decidedly undiplomatic language.” –Washington Post

The United States continues to condemn and call for an immediate end to the Russian occupation of Crimea.

Crimea is a part of Ukraine. Our Crimea-related sanctions will remain in place until Russia returns control over the peninsula to Ukraine. –Amb. Nikki Haley

Comment: There is zero chance that the Putin regime will pull out of Crimea and slim-to-none that any successor regime would.

Here’s my interpretation: The sanctions stay until Putin gives up something significant to Trump. My assumption here is that Trump is transactional and ready to bargain, but he will never give up anything without full compensation. Same for Tillerson. Big difference from Obama and Kerry.

Russia faces bleak economic prospects for the next few years. It may be a case of managed decline in which the government appeases social and political demands by tapping the big reserves it accumulated during the boom years with oil and gas exports. But there is also a smaller possibility of a more serious economic breakdown or collapse. –Andrey Movchan at Carnegie’s Moscow Center

Britain’s strategic ambition to act as a bridge between Europe and the United States long predates Brexit, but it has now become a central component of the government’s hopes of keeping and building influence in the world.

But pressing for higher defence spending looks like a tough ask.

And her hopes of becoming a bridge – or honest broker – between the EU and the US won’t be easily fulfilled either. –BBC

Comment: This bridge needs building, but it cannot be built from the middle pier. It must have a strong anchor in Washington and buy-in, literally, from European nations that have been paying too little.

Iran is the subject of a United Nations Security Council resolution prohibiting tests of ballistic missiles designed to deliver a nuclear warhead. As part of the 2015 nuclear deal, the U.N. ban was prolonged by eight years, although Iran has flaunted the restriction. …

“No longer will Iran be given a pass for its repeated ballistic missile violations, continued support of terrorism, human rights abuses and other hostile activities that threaten international peace and security,” Corker, a Republican from Tennessee, said in a written statement.

Comment: During the campaign, Trump promised to get tough on Iran and, at the very least, make them adhere to the nuclear agreement they signed. This will be his first test of that promise, and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley’s debut in her new post. They face two problems. First, the agreement is multilateral and the other parties to it want to do business with Iran, not force them to live up to the agreement. Second, Pres. Obama and John Kerry negotiated a deal that front-loaded Iran’s benefits, significantly undercutting US leverage going forward. Obama and Kerry, master negotiators and strategists, paid full sticker price plus a heft tip for that “little beauty of a used car.”

Still, I expect Trump and his national security team to pursue a hard line and signal America’s nervous allies in the region that Obama is well and truly gone.

Since regulators blocked the service in 2009, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has hired well-connected executives, developed censorship tools and taken a ‘smog jog’ in Beijing—but the company has made no visible headway.

And as time passes, Facebook is watching from the outside as Chinese social-media giants mop up the market that might have been its own. –WSJ

Comment: Remember when China’s leader, Xi, told the World Economic Forum at Davos that he was a free-trading globalist?

Executives said costs have come down dramatically since [2013] and the new fuel cell system has become smaller, lighter, less complex and more durable.

The fuel cell producing part of the system has been reduced to the size of a box that would come close to fitting onto an airplane as carry-on luggage. A first-generation system from GM took up the entire floor space in a van, executives said. –Fox News

Several current and former WebOps employees cited multiple examples of civilian Arabic specialists who have little experience in counter-propaganda, cannot speak Arabic fluently and have so little understanding of Islam they are no match for the Islamic State online recruiters.

It’s hard to establish rapport with a potential terror recruit when — as one former worker told the AP — translators repeatedly mix up the Arabic words for “salad” and “authority.” That’s led to open ridicule on social media about references to the “Palestinian salad.” –Desmond Butler and Richard Larnder for AP

Further Comment: Rutgers’ Board of Governors should formally reprimand Barchi for this serious misuse of his authority.

Whether the law itself is good or bad is irrelevant. That is why I didn’t mention the substance of the law; all you need to know is that it is politically controversial to know Barchi was seriously wrong. Asking students to engage in a politically-controversial act (as opposed to urging them to vote) oversteps the proper bounds of any university official. To his credit, Barchi said that his request was purely optional. But he should never have made the request at all.

A university president should understand the proper bounds of his or her authority. Requesting students take a specific political position puts the university in a position of backing one view and opposing another. Generally, speaking, the university as an institution should remain neutral so the individual students, faculty, and staff can take any position they wish. If the university does wish to take an institutional position, it should do so but it should never urge students or faculty to support its position.

Arne Duncan, Pres. Obama’s first Sec. of Ed., had 53 follow-up questions. His successor, John King, Jr., had 56. Trump’s nominee, Betsy DeVos, has been flooded with 25 times as many.

Comment: This “flood the zone” strategy is effectively “lawfare,” in which political opponents use lawsuits and bureaucratic manuevers to tie up their opponents. If you oppose Betsy DeVos, vote against her. Stop playing these destructive, delaying games. They are why the House and Senate have lower popular support than used-car dealers.

Comment: Trump’s nominee will inevitably be conservative, but there are different flavors that could please (or repel) different segments of the party. What you can be certain of, in the post-Bork era, is that most Democrats will staunchly oppose.

What we don’t know yet–this will depend on the nominee–is whether some Democrats will support the nomination, perhaps because they are in states Trump carried and facing election themselves soon. Nor do we know if Mitch McConnell will decide to change the rules so the nominee needs 50 votes (plus the Vice-President), rather than 60.

Harry Reid opened the door when he changed the tradition Senate rules, but he did not include the Supreme Court. That exclusion, the Republicans will argue, was arbitrary and, now that Democrats are blocking the nominee, the rules need to change.

With so many elderly Justices, this fight could be repeated going forward, with Trump having a real chance to shape the court for years to come. It was a major issue for many voters, one that helped Trump and hurt Clinton, according to exit polls.

From the information that we have, we have no doubt that the Obama administration initiated it, stood behind it, coordinated on the wording and demanded that it be passed. This is, of course, in complete contradiction of the traditional American policy that was committed to not trying to dictate terms for a permanent agreement, like any issue related to them in the Security Council, and, of course, the explicit commitment of President Obama himself, in 2011, to refrain from such steps. –Statement issued by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at start of Cabinet meeting, Dec. 25, 2016

The Obama Administration has denied any active involvement in the UN Resolution, but the Israelis have said they have “ironclad” proof to the contrary.

I have also written (in this post at ZipDialog) that Pres. Obama’s action will accelerate the movement of traditional Jews away from their historic attachment to the Democratic Party. Other than black voters, Jews are the most reliable ethnic/racial/religious group of Democratic voters. Secular Jews will remain Democrats, but more religious Jews have already shifted significantly and the movement will continue.

♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦

♥ Hat tip to Clarice Feldman for the update about Joe Biden’s pressure on Ukraine. You can read “Clarice’s Pieces” every Sunday at the American Thinker blog.

The Obama administration on Wednesday castigated the Israeli government for approving plans to create a new Jewish settlement on the West Bank, three weeks after it signed a lucrative military aid package with the United States and a week after President Obama traveled to Jerusalem for the funeral of Shimon Peres. In an uncommonly harsh statement, the State Department “strongly condemned” the move . . . –Mark Landler, reporting for the NYT

Last week, when Pres. Obama returned to Washington after Peres, the White House issued a statement that the President had attended funeral in Jerusalem, Israel. Later that day, it issued a correction, striking out the word Israel.

Never mind that the United Kingdom is a democracy. Never mind that free speech and a free press were hard-won over centuries of struggle. The smug bureaucrats at the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) know better. They don’t mean to do so, but they are proving to all Britons that staying in the EU is incompatible with Anglo-American concepts of freedom. Quoting from the ECRI’s drivel:

“In this context, it draws attention to a recent study by Teeside University suggesting that where the media stress the Muslim background of perpetrators of terrorist acts, and devote significant coverage to it, the violent backlash against Muslims is likely to be greater than in cases where the perpetrators’ motivation is downplayed or rejected in favour of alternative explanations.”

Despite the creation of the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) in 2014 as an independent regulator for newspapers and magazines, the “ECRI strongly recommends that the authorities find a way to establish an independent press regulator according to the recommendations set out in the Leveson Report. It recommends more rigorous training for journalists to ensure better compliance with ethical standards.”

⇒ This is what speech suppression in the name of “social justice” looks like. It looks like that in the EU. It looks like that on college campuses.

And here, ladies and gentlemen, is the (inadvertently) funniest song ever about weed. It’s from the Lawrence Welk Show (yes!!) in the early 1970s, when everybody but the staff of the Lawrence Welk Show as totally baked. The Welk folks were so unhip they thought “One Toke Over the Line, Sweet Jesus” was a gospel song. And that’s exactly how they played it. It is a hoot.

Here’s old Willie singing the praises of a joint to Merle. (True story: a friend of mine met Willie to do some business a couple of years ago. 8 am. He said that Willie got off his bus, walked into my friend’s office, and was already buzzed.